I’ve decided to make 2012 into The Year Stuff Gets Out There. Thus, a few things:

The story “Bad Beat” is currently available for view on Raygun Revial.It’s the first of what I hope to be an anthology of Jet Age Mars stories, which I’m shooting to complete in 2013.

“Make Him Talk,” a short story set in the Rag and Bone ectopunk universe, will be coming out in the anthology Postscripts to Darkness later this year. More details as they become available.

I’m doing a bit of an experiment. I’ve published a short story through Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library (as well as for purchase.) I’m making it as easy as possible to spread around, as I’ve refused DRM and want to see it spread far and wide. It’s called The Ballad of the Wayfaring Stranger and the Dead Man’s Whore and I’m more fond of it than someone who casts something into the void should be. Or maybe I’m just fond enough of it to cast it wide.

Zobop Bebop is in edits, the cover art’s done and I’m ready for it to move to print.

Note: This is an effort to create a traditional, Baghdad-by-the-Hudson Superhero City with the illusion of continuity. It’s got room for just about everything and justification for huge, gaping holes in the landscape. All it needs is the right hero…

BACKGROUND:

For a major metropolitan area with a population of more than a million people, Central City has only recently come into its own as a superheroic mecca.

So. The book’s on Draft 4 and counting, which is actually a nice thing. I continue to find that I enjoy the editing process… which is its own thing, most likely.

For those who notice, there’s a Kickstart campaign in progress. We’re eight days out and ahead of schedule… once again, its own thing. A very good thing, too, as it’ll keep this from being more scratching in the basement and once I get this dead and in the ground I’ll be able to start in on one of the other novels bumping around my skull.

Below is the first scene I wrote for the book, something like eight years before I decided to write the thing at all. The rhythm worked and I decided to let it swing. I’m lucky sometimes.

When asteroid mining magnate Roy Singleton declared himself “His Ducal Serene Highness Royal I, Grand Duke of 52 Europa,” the central Earth government saw it as one of dozens of publicity stunts the eccentric billionaire had undertaken in his career. As one of the first people to engage in large-scale exploitation of the Belt (and the first to make space profitable after the Martian fiasco,) he’d earned the right to call himself whatever he wanted as long as he kept the raw materials needed to maintain the Marrakesh Miracle.

I’ve got a number of orphans under my roof, but “Thirteen O’Clock” is the one who most deserves a home.

I’d been thinking about cities and superheroes, how they fit together and where they didn’t, and decided to create a Spooky City. Most classic comic book worlds have a hint of spooky somewhere, whether it’s the creepy characters who get trotted out for Halloween special issues or a full-bore Gaslight Ghetto where the creepy superheroes and macabre supervillains live. Some supercities even have spooky cycles… Gotham has them regularly (when it’s not being Sick or Hard,) and James Robinson’s Opal City had them regularly during his superlative “Starman” run.

I wanted to go a slightly different route, though. I wanted to create a city that was all Spooky all the time, but that stayed true to a superheroic vibe. I wanted wise-cracking urban heroes with uneasy relationships with the police, mighty redeemers from the stars and superteams that weren’t collections of moody loners glowering and then skulking into the darkness. Admittedly, these characters would fit the “moody loner who highlights the brightness of the main character and gives the sulky kids something to read” role in other peoples’ books. In their own, though, they’d be the show-runners and, thus, they’d be… superheroes.

Who happened to be spooky.

Wrote up two issues of a four issue limited series set in New Jerusalem, a city that’s a little bit Richmond and a little bit Baltimore. Plotted the whole thing out to my satisfaction, splitting each issue into a deadline-based, rush-against-the-clock adventure and a setting piece.

It’s in the “someday” pile at this point. I’ve cannibalized a chunk of it, but the remainder’s hale and hearty and ready for a good home.

Someday’s a long time, and filled with possibility. I look forward to holding this in my hands at some point or, even better, watching it unfold on screen.

Here are the first five pages of Issue 1 and a couple of character descriptions: Continue reading →